Dawkins describes trans ID as a meme

[nythbran2]

Very surprised he didn't say this year's earlier (or did I miss it?). Still an unpleasant man though. www.thetimes.com/article/3f4adf27-3fb8-463a-9c1c-3a90ba605b2f?shareToken=0f280c08e52b86d1cd6b0cd7a3a7b3ba

Why can there never be a thread mentioning something Dawkins has said which discusses it without ad hominem barbs and absolute rot like 'He genuinely can't see any difference between a C of E vicar and an Al Qaeda terrorist. '.

' Hello children. Today I'm pretending to be Santa because it confers some evolutionary advantage on the tribe. Stop crying ; you will merely alert some predator to your existence!'

I actually do think Dawkins would be fun to have a proper discussion with at a party. It would be so boring if everyone would agree with each other all the time.

He's free to have a relationship with whoever he wants and I'm free to pass comment on what is a pretty unusual relationship age gap.

His books are fascinating and significant. He’s one hell of a scientist; he isn’t auditioning to be a great person.

I think he's right about the very modern idea of trans being a social construct or whatever. I do think though that feelings of gender dysphoria/ incongruence or whatever you want to call it, is a real condition that has always existed and is a settled condition for some.

Not that unusual for high status men who have money or influence or fame.

Just a typical bloke in that regard, isn't he?

I think he's great, but I'm used to the academic environment where it isn't seen as offensive to challenge and ask about things.

I saw him give a lecture on an specific evolutionary topic, a few years before the God Delusion came out. He was actually incredibly patient with the moronic Christians who had attended (not even biology students, they shouldn't have been there) to tell him that the eye proved the existence of God. He was clearly pushed and pushed by the anti-evolution movement forcing themselves into his space, to write the God Delusion at all. It was a bigger version of JKR feeling forced to put nuances thoughts into her essay, as twitter isn't the right format for complexity.

The world needs people like him and the evolutionary principles laid out in the Selfish Gene do apply to social contagions, so he is very much an expert in the field.

I enjoy his podcast The Poetry of Reality: yes he reckons himself, but given his track record why wouldn't he?

And his interviews are respectful. The one with Helen Joyce, in particular, was fabulous.

Dawkins is absolutely right about it being social contagion.

Obviously TRAs have a vested interest in pretending that being trans is an inherent trait like being gay or left handed.

But all the evidence points to social contagion. The Cass review has revealed that girls who are questioning their gender currently outnumber boys six to one.

GIDs stopped recording the natal sex of their patients once they realised that girls outnumbered boys five to one. It just demonstrates that the entire ideology is built on a lie.

If, as TRAs claim, some people are just born trans (like some people are born left handed) then why are there so many middle aged men who suddenly realise they were always trans when they start watching sissy porn?

Where are all the middle aged women who should be suddenly realising they were always men?

I gather from people I know who have had dealings with him that he can be difficult and condescending. But he's very smart, he's good at communicating ideas and he's absolutely right about the trans stuff. When you think of the number of scientists/rationalists/skeptics who could have spoken out about this and haven't, I'm grateful that he's chosen to do so.

I’m glad Dawkins gets it and talks about it. I’m not his greatest fan, he is grumpy, sometimes arrogant and intolerant, but he can think. And he doesn’t put “being kind” and jumping on bandwagons before thinking, unlike some well-known supposed scientists. Perhaps because he doesn’t have a “kind” reputation to lose. He’s right - there is absolutely zero evidence that being trans is innate, and piles of obvious evidence it’s socially contagious and attracts people who want to feel special or accepted and predators who want to exploit it.

You only have to see a friendship group of 10/11-year-old girls realise that being LGBTQ gets them cool points and all claim a trans, NB, bi, gay etc identify within days to understand the social contagion aspect. This happened to my DD’s friendship group. 6 months later they’d moved onto the next thing. Only one who’d said she was a boy continued with it, then changed it to nb, then decided she was a girl again after a couple of years. Like over 90% do if allowed to grow up without being shunted onto a medical pathway. Innate my arse.

His specialism is evolutionary biology though. He's definitely worth listening to on the issue of the sex of humans.

He invented the term "meme" ffs (a unit of cultural selection). It quite literally is his specialism.

He invened the term meme.

He is wrong that being transgender is a meme.

Just like Robert Winston, Dawkins is exceptionally well-qualified to understand and talk about human sex, plus he’s an expert in memes as well.

But you don’t have to be scientist to see that there are several reasons people are identifying as trans that are not to do with somehow magically being the opposite sex, but to do with wanting to fit in and be cool, financial gain like winning sports prizes, access to female or child victims, sexual fetishes and insta fame. Anyone who tries to deny this at this point is basically closing their eyes and shouting “la la la I can’t hear you” because they’re scared of being a big bad bigot (or have a vested interest).

He's right, it's absolutely a meme.

Meme (from the Greek mimema meaning ‘imitated’) 🤔
Sounds about right.

Gender ideology in its current form does exhibit some of the properties of a successful meme, specifically the adoption of tactics that will propagate the meme to the exclusion of alternatives. These include suppression of free speech, punishment of non-believers, indoctrination of minors, and infiltration of civic institutions, and have previously worked well to spread other memes such as religions.

The only research papers on social contagion (the method by which memes are transmitted) were disowned by the writer and withdrawn for methodological flaws. To demonstrate it's a meme, you'd have to prove social contagion.

If you can figure out why there was a huge increase in left-handedness from this graph, you can figure out why more people are reporting being transgender.

Of course it's a meme.
It only isn't one if you are still beholden to the contagion yourself.

You obviously can't prove social contagion 100%, but if you had the probalility of being 'born trans' (or a claim of one) you could easily demonstrate that the probability of say 70% of a group of preteen girls being trans (which we are seeing) is so vanishingly unlikely. What about detransitioners? Are you really still claiming, after all we know, that being trans is innate like being left handed, and it's just a question of how accepted it is? Can you not see the sociocultural element at all?

Dadjoke if you really don’t think it’s a social contagion, can you explain what you think is happening when a group of 10yo girls all pick themselves a lgbtq identity and buy flags and badges for it, with none of them choosing “straight and cis” even though that would actually be over 80% of people, because that’s terminally uncool, and then forgetting about it when some other trend catches their eye?

And that’s fine - it’s what kids do - trends, memes and social contagions are not necessarily bad in themselves. The problem is adults taking it seriously. If one of those girls has affirming parents, teachers and doctors she could end up being pushed down a pathway that will end up destroying her fertility and health for life, when she would have had a high likelihood of growing out of it and accepting her actual true self - a female, however she likes to present - with maturity. And this is happening to loads of girls.

Do you honestly really think that this is a story of an innate gender identity? How? Please explain instead of just repeating unevidenced dogma.

I wondered when someone would provide, some unsourced data from google.

left and right handed people have a visible preference.

unlike gendered people who only have secret, or not so secret genders.

spurious linkage at its best

You absolutely can demonstrate social contagion if it existed, using the right methodology. Like sexuality, gender identity has innate, environmental and cultural elements, and like sexuality, can shift over time. Sexuality is a better match than left-handedness (which is almost entirely innate) but the graph demonstrated my point. What do you think a graph of people who admit to being homosexual over time would look like?